I thought this was pretty amazing, Through out of body experience and Cottard's syndrum, where one has an Alien leg, the Author goes on to explore the different mechanisms in our brain and sensory organs that makes up out conception of the space that e physically occupy. it seems that we can actually occupy alien bodies if we trick our selves to do it. this might have explained the whole-ness with the universe during good trips. Also, the explination of the slow time seems to be the speeding up of "emotional/sensory" instances that our brain gives up as generalized instances . super cool !

Fantastic book! I have Bachelor Of Science in Psychology and have taken quite a few neuroscience classes, so I already knew of all of these mental illness and what is thought to be the cause of them.

However, reading about the individuals the author met with these disorders and his philosophical and spiritual thoughts about them, was incredibly interesting. As a person who is deeply into Buddhism and the idea of the oneness, I found this take on mental illness to be wonderful to read.

Really interesting stories of people dealing with conditions that affect sense of self. There is a great deal of brain biology mixed in with personal stories. I found it really interesting, a bit over my head at times.

Interesting but not nearly as engaging as I had hoped it would be. Felt like every chapter began and ended with the same pattern.

Audiobook review
I listen to a lot of audiobooks. Have done for years. This one stands out as being the one that makes me fall asleep every time. Rather than resenting this, I’ve learned to embrace it. At least once a month, when I’m struggling to get to sleep, I put a chapter of this on, and I’m away in no time. Works like a charm, and available without prescription

I had to skim a bit in the beginning because I read a lot of this sort of thing, but most parts of this books were totally compelling. It's not exactly cognitive science and not exactly psychology. It's a great example of the dawning collective acceptance that there really isn't a mind/body dualism, just one whole entity, and if something is out-of-whack psychologically, there is likely an accompanying visible physical/chemical anomaly.

It's great science, great writing, and the author is an engaging personality. Particularly compelling for me were the section on people who have a strong sense that a body part does not belong to them, to the point where they seek amputation. I started out thinking, "what!? these people need therapy!" and ended up realizing, "oh, that makes total sense" once the author gave more explanation. Any book that can flip your expectations like that -- and enable empathy like that -- is worth reading.

Too much philosophy for my tastes. Do I really care about how the 'self' is viewed as a narrative versus self as an object versus etc.? No, no, I do not. I started getting bored by the 80 page mark and my interest was only mildly piqued by schizophrenia.

I tried. Blah. I should have taken this book out of the library.

This book, while tackling a variety of neurological conditions that are interesting, is hit and miss with covering material that truly sparks discussion or better understanding. It feels like the author would benefit from more editing, both to reduce the meandering pontificating about the nature of the self, and to make sure questions the reader is interested in are answered. For example, the chapter on BIID, which was probably the most interesting chapter in the book, never goes into what about the identity as an amputee is essential to those who go with a surgical option: do they feel it is important to not wear prosthetics? What helps them present to the world as an amputee so that their internal identity matches their external identity, when so many who have amputations by necessity choose to lessen the appearance of their amputation in public. This is the kind of stuff you won't find out in this book. If neurological conditions like these are interesting to you, you'll be much more satisfied by reading source material by Ramachandran, whose first book on Phantom Limb Syndrome is fascinating and much more engaging.

Maybe it just wasn't the time for me to read this and maybe it was because the concept of the self is so hard to contemplate (the whole point of the book, kinda) but I wasn't able to keep my focus on the meat of the book. I loved the first hand accounts, as I think many people do.

But, I think this is an important book because it takes away the scary masks of a lot of psychological "disorders" that are often placed on them and discussed what it means to be a these people, both personally and neuro-psychologically (is that a word lol), qualitatively and quantitatively.